


Boat To An Island On The Wall

by yourcrookedheart



Series: Fanfiction Tropes [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 02:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14990351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: They still share beds sometimes, on missions where there is no other option.





	Boat To An Island On The Wall

**Author's Note:**

> Remember when it was 2011 and we all shipped this? Yeah. High time to revisit the past, I thought.
> 
> This drabble was written for the trope ‘Sleeping Arrangements’.
> 
> Title from the song of the same name by Ben Howard.

They still share beds sometimes, on missions where there is no other option. 

Roadside motels that are too squalid to demand the rates they do, with bespectacled receptionists who gleefully inform them that there is only one room left, one with a queen-size bed, knowing full well there are no other motels in a hundred mile radius. They always take the room.

There are nights in tents that are advertised as two-person but in reality could only fit two small children comfortably. Any adults who wish to share would have to lay curled up into each other, bodies pressed together. In colder climates, they’ve long since discovered, such a thing is not without its benefits. 

Nothing ever happens, and nothing ever will. Natasha loves Laura, loves the kid even though it hasn’t even been born yet, and anyway, the passion between her and Clint has faded over the years. Trickled into something quiet and comfortable, affectionate without the charge his touches used to bring.

And yet. 

Neither of them has ever told Laura, about how it used to be. 

That first time they met, a rush of pleasure at the challenge the American spy posed. Fighting merging into a different kind of dance, and yes Clint had made a different call because he’d seen something in her, but not even Fury knows he made the call after a long night of passion and sweat. He’d seen her fight, he’d seen her fuck, and then he’d seen her humanity. Natasha still wonders where she’d be if she hadn’t licked her lips in the middle of their brawl, then licked his.

After that came three years worth of missions. Natalia and Clint becoming Natasha-and-Clint, two-headed strike team of S.H.I.E.L.D. They gained a reputation, and it felt better than the solo infamy Natasha had been used to. Jakarta, Amsterdam, Budapest. The hotel rooms changed, their post-mission entertainment never did.

It’s not something Natasha feels the need to revisit. Histories are made to be left behind; this is simply another version of that story. Clint smiles at Laura the way he’d never smiled at her, and all she feels is a pang for all they could have been, and all they never were.

Everything changes, the world a constant flow between past-present-future, but Natasha and Clint still share beds. Sometimes Natasha thinks it’s the one thing that will never change.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://queennsansa.tumblr.com/).


End file.
